Monday, July 27, 2009

Imagine yourself in 1994. The whole jungle thing is kicking off big time, and you love it, but you happen to have this other side—maybe it's an artsy-fartsy ambient "let's smoke a bowl and talk about the universe" side, or perhaps it's a getting-in-touch-with-your-black-roots wannabe-jazz-musician "one of these days I'm gonna learn to play vibes just like Roy Ayers" side, or maybe you're just one of those pretentious types who thinks ragga is for dummies and this whole jungle thing would be a delight if only there were some intellectuals like you to make it inscrutable to the unwashed masses.Back in the day all three of those somewhat unseemly forces united and churned out a sound referred to as "ambient jungle", "atmospheric jungle", "jazz jungle", "intelligent drum & bass", "artcore", and a few dozen other names that the press tried to push out there but that never really stuck.This stuff was adored by the critics back in the day (I remember reviews from the jungle section in Urb saying "thank goodness this new Reinforced comp doesn't have any stinking AMENS in it"), but it's been pretty much forgotten today. I chalk it up to a combination of jungle's declining relevance in the current musical climate, the fact that the jungle tunes remembered as classics tend to be the dancefloor-smashing ragga anthems, and the reality that today's crop of jungle kids came up on said ragga anthems and don't actually know much about original jungle beyond those big tracks. On the rare occasions when people do bring up this genre, it's usually to malign it (my pal and sometimes collaborator DJ C hates the stuff, for instance).Make no mistake, a bunch of ambient jungle was fucking awful. It sounds like an advertisement for body lotion that you might see on Lifetime, or like the music they play in Pottery Barn. But then again, a lot of it was really good, and due to prevailing tastes in jungle at large, I never ever get a chance to play this stuff. So here goes.Chrissy Murderbot's Year of Mixtapes Week 9: Ambient Jungle

Monday, July 20, 2009

This week I've got a two-parter dealing with one guy: the enigmatic and super-influential disco producer Bobby Orlando (aka Bobby'O). Whether you've heard of him or not, you've definitely heard his influence—he basically invented a lot of the dance music clichés of the 1980s and '90s, and while you may not be as fond of said clichés as I am, you still gotta give dude credit for being so dang influential.That having been said, Bobby'O is an incredibly strange dude—a complete contradiction on a lot of levels. He's a hyper-macho, incredibly cocky, rampantly homophobic ex-boxer who made gay disco. He once backed out of a lease because he found out the previous tenant was gay, yet he produced legendary drag queen Divine, and discovered the Pet Shop Boys. Most of his songs are brazen odes to sex and partying, and yet he's a fundamentalist Christian who penned a (still unpublished) book on creationism called Darwin Destroyed. He created some of the most original dance music of the 1980s, but he seemingly was just as happy to shamelessly plagiarize current dance hits, releasing a slew of blatant soundalikes and proudly referring to himself as "the McDonald's of the dance record industry". He was incredibly prolific, releasing dozens of records each month on the numerous labels he ran, and citing the Bible as his reason: "I'm being fruitful, I'm multiplying," he told The Face in 1987. "I put out more records than anybody in the world; there's nobody that puts out more records than me. If a producer has the ability to put out that many records and he doesn't then he is disobeying God's command." DUDE WAS WEIRD.

So yeah, I felt like to really get a feel for this guy required two mixes. Part 1 is the case for Bobby'O as musical genius: 23 of my fave Bobby Orlando tunes. They may not be lyrical masterpieces, but they are all intensely catchy dance tunes couched in some groundbreaking production techniques, and I fucking adore them.Part 2 showcases the embarrassing shameless hack side of Bobby'O. It comprises 7 pairs of songs: one big club hit of the 1980s followed by Orlando's transparent theft of said song. This one isn't beatmixed so much as just placed side by side, to keep clear the distinction between the original song and Bobby's rip-off. A few of his ripoffs are great, but most aren't, and even the good ones are still pretty damning from a copyright perspective.

Monday, July 13, 2009

This week I've got a tape of a sub-sub-sub-genre of disco—Sleaze. Back in the day you had these humongous gay clubs (like Trocadero Transfer in San Francisco, or The Saint in New York), and on the weekends they generally chugged along until 10am (or later) in a big drug-fueled dance orgy. "Sleaze" (or "Morning Music", as it was sometimes called) was the term for the slow disco stompers that got played in the wee hours, after 6am or so, when only the hardcore dancers were left. To some DJs this meant slow/happy/dramatic, to others it meant slow/slutty/raunchy...the impression I've always gotten is that if you really wanna split hairs, 'morning music' describes the former and 'sleaze' describes the latter. Anyway, here is a mix of stripped-down slimey slutty sunrise disco to serve as the soundtrack for you and your pals doing amyl nitrite and having sex in public.Chrissy Murderbot's Year of Mixtapes Week 7: Sleaze

Monday, July 6, 2009

This week's tape comes in two parts—each part is 30 minutes (so pull out your C60 and get dubbing folks), and they both center on words oft-heard in the little corner of dance music that I inhabit.

Side A: Booty Music.This mix is all tunes with the word 'Booty' in the title. They mostly deal with one of two main booty concepts in popular music—instructions on what to do with ones booty, and admiration of the booties of others. There's some disco & funk, but the bulk of the tape covers the genres sometimes collectively referred to as "booty music": Miami Bass, Juke, Ghettotech, Ghetto House, and the like, rounded off with a proper classic jungle tune for good measure.

Side B: Jack Trax.This one is a little harder to explain to your average non-Midwestern non-dance music person. First off, forget about the New Jack Swing tape from last week; this 'jack' is completely unrelated. Here in the Chi, jacking is a dance people have been doing to house music since the very early days of the scene. The dance is jerky, jumpy, bouncy, and there are DJs who have built careers on playing nothing but "Jackin' House" or "Jack Trax"—a specific style of house that is tricky to describe but basically arranges the percussion so as to super-emphasize the 1-2-3-4, making the beat seem more pronounced.The term "jack" has been referenced over and over by house and techno artists for more than two decades (the first house record to hit #1 in the UK was "Jack Your Body"), and the mere mention of the word to a house enthusiast stirs up nostalgia for the good old days. As the flip to the booty mix I've thrown together 30 minutes of tunes with 'Jack' in the title, all of which (save one) play on the house music sense of the word. This one might be divisive—the househeads are gonna be like "OMG CHOOOON!", but a lot of this will probably seem SERIOUSLY corny to the uninitiated. Fair warning!Chrissy Murderbot's Year of Mixtapes Week 6, Side A: Booty Music